OneBeep

Imagine a village way beyond internet infrastructure or even phone lines. Such areas are the target of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) and

Imagine a village way beyond internet infrastructure or even phone lines. Such areas are the target of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) and the Intel Classmate PC programmes, designed to get low-cost computers into poor communities. These initiatives have deployed a combined 2.6 million laptops to remote communities around the globe. There are plans to deploy 30 million in the next 5 years. But majority of these laptops are disconnected. OneBeep has developed an inexpensive and robust method to send educational content to these laptops. Using OneBeep’s software a file of educational data can be converted to audio, which is sent via radio waves. This can be received on any cheap AM/FM radio, which passes it on to the laptop. The file is then converted back to its original form once it has been received on the children's laptops ready to be viewed. As every village has AM radios, you now have a low-cost way to beam out daily lessons, health material etc over long distances to thousands of children.